What Do New Star Wars Characters Bring to The Last Jedi?

1 year ago

With the countdown towards Star Wars: The Last Jedi continuing, two new images have surfaced, featuring a new look at Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) and Admiral Amilyn Holdo (Laura Dern). While both actresses couldn’t reveal much about their characters, Kelly Marie Tran did reveal that John Boyega, who returns as Finn, is “very funny” while teasing that there was some improvising that they could do during production. Laura Dern, however, had a more cryptic statement about all of the new characters. Here’s what she had to say below.

“The new people will either be leading or misleading the heroes.”

This new report comes just after a new Star Wars: The Last Jedi poster was released, and with just one month until the highly-anticipated sequel hits theaters, it remains unclear how many more details about these new characters, and every other character in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, will be released. Laura Dern revealed that LucasFilm president Kathleen Kennedy’s mantra is “strong female characters,” which we’ll get with both Rose Tico and Amilyn Holdo. Kelly Marie Tran is also the first major Asian female character in the Star Wars universe, with the actress revealing that she never saw anyone like her before in the movies.

“When I was growing up, I didn’t see anyone like me in movies. And I wanted to be white for the longest time, because I thought that meant my story would be valid. When you’re a kid, you see images on TV and on billboards and in magazines-they all look the same, and you wonder, ‘Why don’t I look like that? And can I change myself to look like that?'”

The actress recently revealed in another interview that she had never seen a Star Wars movie, and she recently joined social media as well, by joining Instagram. She used her platform to showcase her Halloween costume, where she dressed up as one of the lovable Porgs along with one of her friends. Here’s what she had to say about joining social media.

“I was afraid of being picked apart. Being able to fail anonymously is such a luxury. But I realized that if I am in this franchise, I have to have a voice, and that includes speaking out on social media.”

Both Tran and Dern revealed they were incredibly excited to join the franchise, with Tran revealing that she was exploring the Star Wars set, “like a weird nerd”. Laura Dern recalled what her father, legendary actor Bruce Dern, had told her about the Star Wars franchise while she was visiting him on the set of Silent Running, where Bruce had befriended visual effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull. The droids on the Silent Running set had served as his inspiration to create C-3PO and R2-D2. Here’s what she had to say about her first scene with these iconic droids, and how it brought back a lot of memories.

“I got ready for my first scene. And when they called ‘action,’ I opened my eyes and I saw C-3PO and started to cry. When I was a kid, my dad told me about these two characters they were making for this next movie. So it just feels like it’s come full circle, to be in the company of these characters that I heard about and then grew to love. I felt like I was actually waking up in my childhood fantasy.”

These new photos debuted in Time magazine, although it remains to be seen how much more we’ll get to see before the December 15 debut. While it seems unlikely that another trailer will be released between now and then, it’s possible that we may get to see more photos and even a few clips. Take a look at these new photos for Star Wars: The Last Jedi below.